shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: girls on bikes

Morning Linkage (Sep 1)

Transportation

It’s not a bad look­ing bike — at all. H‑D pitch­es to the young­sters. No blondes allowed?

A bit of French his­to­ry, a pret­ty lady on a bike, and a Comiot tricycle.

Ralph Stead­man illus­trates Hunter Thomp­son on a Ducati. Per­fect match.

The GSX 1100 des­ig­na­tion has been with us for a very long time. This item from the 80’s is one of the rea­sons why.

Science

From WSU. Why the nice guys get vot­ed off the island. Prop­er title of the paper: “The Desire to Expel Unselfish Mem­bers from the Group”. Humans are so weird.

Gaming

Point and click adven­ture games are always pop­u­lar with the “I don’t wan­na shoot more stuff” crowd. Most­ly they’re based on var­i­ous poly­gon ren­der­ing engines. But Cock­roach is build­ing some thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. Clay and actu­al mod­el mak­ing are used to cre­ate stop-motion sequences for The Dream Machine. A haunt­ed apart­ment com­plex… and a game for grown ups. You can play a demo or sign up for the beta test of chap­ter one here.

Art, Images, and Design

I have a new com­ic in the RSS read­er. Try this one with the fly­ing car.

Humans make unin­ten­tion­al art by their actions. A col­lec­tion of pho­tographs of all of the con­tra­band brought in to the USA via Kennedy Inter­na­tion­al Air­port from Nov 16 to Nov 20, 2009.

Food, visu­al puns, and nice­ly done let­ter­press work. Let­ter­form does a series of sweet greet­ing cards.

Animation

We wel­come our mys­te­ri­ous cat-head over­lords? Um, demon­ic, ted­dy bears? I have no idea but it’s fun and goes well with too many lattes. (Video 0:57)

snack time!

Morning Linkage (Aug 4)

Transportation

I am tak­en by the smart sim­plic­i­ty of the head­lamp brack­et and the mat­te black on the head­er pipes. Moto Guzzi.

Hell for Leather stops just short of accu­rate­ly describ­ing this lat­est pro­mo video from Tri­umph. Lis­ten to the voice over with­out watch­ing the video. He’s not talk­ing about a bike

As penance for  the pre­vi­ous content-free link, I bring you… Drags and Rac­ing’s all dark Tri­umph Bon­neville. I sat on a Bon­neville last week­end… It fits. Drags and Rac­ing web­site — in Ital­ian,. NSFW nudity.

Girls on bikes. A lit­tle sweet for some of you but I’m charmed and it is a Laverda.

Boys on bikes. Same look and feel but a boy and a Honda.

Science

If lasers cre­ate light in care­ful­ly con­trolled wave­lengths what would an anti-laser do? Absorb light in care­ful­ly con­trolled wave­lengths. Okay, I’m not smart enough to have come up with that but some­one has. And now that the idea has been described there’s a race on to build one and to fig­ure out what it’s use­ful for.

Words and Food

Work­ing Word­smith Alert. New CMoS. Sneak a peak at some of the shiny new rules and learn which of your old favorites they took out back and shot. (Chica­go Man­u­al of Style)

Nora May­nard dis­cuss­es her top picks from the field of new drink­ables offered at Tales of the Cock­tail. I’m think­ing that I’ll have to hunt down a bot­tle of the Coc­chi Amer­i­cano before sum­mer ends.

Art, Images, and Design

- the dreamy sum­mer edition

These are Jim Denevan’s tools. These are his images.

The chil­dren’s book illus­tra­tions of Igor Oleynokov. Flu­id pas­tel worlds. The seascapes are espe­cial­ly enchanting.

Have I told you about Pooh Sticks? Maybe not. But that’s for anoth­er day, when there’s a weak autumn sun and noth­ing much to regret. Mean­while here’s a sum­mer ver­sion of play­ing with bits of wood and water. Lit­tle Drifters. Lenny makes oth­er things out of flot­sam and jet­sam as well.

Beach scene, black and white per­fec­tion. (Mild­ly NSFW)

Morning Linkage (Jul 26)

Transportation

Dark Roast Blend — anoth­er huge col­lec­tion of stuff — micro cars. There are some gems here as well as some laughs.

New car at the top of the wish list. Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 B Cor­to Tour­ing Berlinet­ta. And why did I have to find this on That Will Buff Out?
http://thatwillbuffout.com/2010/07/21/funny-car-photos-wish-list-wednesday/
The real scoop. Sec­ond car down in this thread (After the also desir­able Bugatti)

Two-fer xs650s:

xs650 cus­tom — not quite per­fect to my eye. I can’t put my fin­ger on why. But that 3rd pic­ture is gonna keep me up nights (sweat.)

xs650 street track­er. Nice bal­ance of flash and purpose.

Wide angle shots of var­i­ous cock­pits. The black­bird will make your eyes cross and the hydro­gen pow­ered land-speed con­tender is about as sim­ple as it gets.

Visual Geography

Super­im­pos­ing aer­i­al pho­tographs of the same bit of ground from dif­fer­ent years (or decades) gives fas­ci­nat­ing insights into how we grown into and out of our geog­ra­phy over time. There are some new pho­tographs (1924) and maps avail­able for NYC.

The map­ping appli­ca­tion at NYC’s GIS is some­times over­whelmed but worth return­ing to. Click on the cam­era and then move the slid­er under­neath for a choice of dates.

Some point­ers form the WSJ about things you might want to be on the look out for while you’re cruis­ing the maps.

Visual Physics.

3 videos for the new Lagoa physics mod­el­ing engine. (Sound)

Architecture and Toys

Any­one who has attempt­ed to assem­ble one of the more com­pli­cat­ed Lego mod­els recent­ly will remem­ber curs­ing the hor­ri­ble pic­tures only direc­tions. It need not be so awful as these clever instruc­tions for a build­ing block set show. The text excerpts about edu­ca­tion­al the­o­ries are a bit more inter­est­ing than any­thing you’re like­ly to get to read today as well.

Art, Images, and Design

Some­where in this col­lec­tion of folk art cats pub­lished by Tara Books (India) is sure to the be the cat of your dreams/nightmares.

Stink­fish. Girl rid­ing a bicy­cle.


It’s always something.

Morn­ing Link­age lives at http://shinymagpie.net

Morning Linkage (Jun 15)

(Confused) Transportation Options

A Smart Car mon­ster truck. If any­one ever asks you to define the term twee oxy­moron — show them this pic­ture. Srl­sy. And there’s video. More hap­pi­ly there’s a post over at Men’s Men­tore about race car trans­porters from the 50’s. Lord, are these fab­u­lous look­ing. An El Camino car­ry­ing an open wheel rac­er and a swoopy round haunched Mer­cedes with a fro­mu­la car on the back. Swoon. I need­ed a moto pic­ture for this morn­ing’s links so I went to the big buck­et of trans­porta­tion RSS feeds and there this was — right on the top

.

Literature and Culture.

It’s sum­mer — we all need some­thing to read at the beach. But how to choose a sum­mer win­ner? Um, maybe ask the writer who penned your favorite book? William Gib­son weighs in on sci-fi and Peter Cary gives you his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, along with 4 oth­ers. Pro­pa­gan­da mate­r­i­al of the ages is a rich source of visu­al inspi­ra­tion. Meant to grab and jerk the view­er from a dis­tance with­out much con­sid­er­a­tion for sub­tle­ty. Smash­ing gives us a look at 100 years of his­to­ry and some of the best and worst exam­ples. Judg­ing the images and their effec­tive­ness with­out con­sid­er­ing the mes­sages is an try­ing exer­cise in design mind.

Art, Images, and Design

Sci­ence Tele­vi­sion is Gian­mar­co Mag­nani. A design­er and print mak­er. His two cur­rent series of prints, Vil­lains and Rid­ers, and  For­got­ten Monar­chy bring spot col­or and line work to the fore. Vague­ly ani­me inspired, girls and motos. Can’t miss. Paper and paint mixed with bits of toy-train set world-building goods. Land­scape through the eyes of Gre­go­ry Euclide. Dan­ny St. (saint) takes pic­tures in Sin­ga­pore. Street pic­tures that pro­vide por­traits of the peo­ple and place. This gallery gives some of the hun­dreds of won­der­ful images.

Animation

Group ther­a­py for naughty lit­tle un-deads. Okay, it’s called Nos­fer­atu Over The Cuck­oo’s Nest. You fig­ure it out.

Noisy, Smoky, Generally Bad

Bejamin Gudel (from a cou­ple of days ago) has a nice new web­site.  But you have got to seri­ous­ly admire a guy who includes a link to this animated/audio-ated mess of a 2007 web­site. Healthy sense of humor, or mor­bid self fla­gel­la­tion. You make the call. (Mov­ing parts, noise, and an obscene tat­too) NSFW

Tea drunk, links up, next … plumb­ing — urk.

Morning Linkage (Mar 10)

Transportation

Ply­wood pad­dler for the junior set. Fun­ny how much the logo looks like Harley David­son from a dis­tance. Cute though.

1923 BMW fac­to­ry floor. Lots more vin­tage in the Vin­tage Motor­bikes Flickr pool but beware of bad cap­tions, and wild ass guess­es as to makes and models.

Scroll down once for hot girl in short skirt on a real rock­et of a bike. And I love how the cape stays ful­ly extend­ed while she’s sit­ting still on the desk. Yeah — it’s a Japan­ese super­hero toy. (SFW)

1937 Harley bob­ber. Anoth­er fab Dan­ish builder, Cus­toms from Jamesville.

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Science and Technology

A look at what’s under Nia­gara Falls. In 1969 the Army Corps of Engi­neers stopped the water flow over the falls in order to be able to inspect and but­tress up, if nec­es­sary, the rock face. In the com­ments look for Bla­tanville he’s got more info. Bitchin’ pics.

If you’ve got a stream with decent flow (7.5 ft/sec) you can have 500 watts of elec­tric­i­ty from a device that weights 25 pounds. Very use­ful. (7.5 ft/sec is about 8 miles/hour — which is pret­ty fast for a big riv­er but not so fast for a creek or stream.)

Test­ing struc­tures and new designs for resis­tance to earth­quakes at UNC’s Con­struct­ed Facil­i­ties Lab. Cruise the gallery for a look at cur­rent reasearch and projects. Lots of big (red) machines.

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Art. Images, and Design

Creepy lit­tle hand-made char­ac­ter dolls. In that quaint Dick­en­sian night­mare vein.

I’m claim­ing this is art. Scan­ning micro­scope images of the grooves in an LP. Images 2 and 3 look like the geog­ra­phy of memory.

These are hys­ter­i­cal. Old pho­tos with mod­ern goofy, think Car­toon Chan­nel kid’s show, char­ac­ters pho­to­shopped in. Rel­lano de Mono from Chile. (His per­son­al web­site is down. Not sur­pris­ing. I hope he is safe.)

A friend­ly reminder that it’s not about the gear or the jar­gon or even the tech­ni­cal prowess, but the see­ing. A medi­a­tion on what it means to be a pro­fes­sion­al (pho­tog­ra­ph­er) or an ama­teur. Applies to all artists.

that is all